Residency. Part 5: A Work in Progress

by Katie Anderson

After a lot of humming and hawing and uncertainty, a lot of things seemed to ping into place. I became engrossed in the notion of ‘looking’ and of creating an instrument for ‘looking’ more at our surroundings. ‘Looking’ differently, with a slight change of perception. There was also a growing notion of our need to announce our arrival, from planting flags, carrying rocks to join the topmost cairns, taking snaps for later dispersal, to the beacon bonfires of 2012.

The ambiguity of the horn shape has gotten me a bit hooked. Horns as amplifiers, both for our own noise, and the noise of others.

Text as a means to bridge the ambiguity gap, or indeed to hint towards it became the most ideal mechanism, though my eloquence leaves a lot to be desired. Something of producing objects that will outlive myself (so long as they are not melted down for scrap/remoulding) adds to the pressure of things like text, which feel so final and static as soon as they are written, however done it is, and the text will stand as it is.

In two halves:

SOUND THE HORN. RING CLEAR.

And then:

LISTEN OUT. TO THE NEXT HILLTOP.

The shape is fairly ideal for playing with acoustics. Rather than portraying an accurate amplifying of the current sound, it distorts, jumbles and disorientates within the built environment at least. The ceramics give a fairly satisfying echo, due to their shape and material. The copper is yet to be tested extensively, as it is also yet to be completely finished.

I’m now on the hunt for the correct mounting mechanism parts to assemble (including brass munsen rings larger than the ones I’ve got), some birch (cut into flat pieces), a joiner or carpenter, a case for the full apparatus, and some wool to make a felt lining. Every year I promise myself a camping trip to explore Scotland a bit more thoroughly, and now the quest may have to include the testing of the Sound Horns from different locations.